1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an advertisement, and particularly to an advertisement service using a printer or a memory cartridge on which a memory is mounted on a cartridge containing ink or other recording agent and/or paper or other media.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, there has been suggested a unit on which a memory is mounted on a cartridge containing ink or other recording agent used for printing of a printer. Additionally, it is suggested to store information including the number of prints, the number of printed sheets per sheet size, a manufacturing date, and a product serial number in the mounted memory.
In these conventional technologies, the information stored in the cartridge memory has been mainly used for acquiring operating information of the printer. In this context, for example, there has not been supposed a mechanism in which information stored in a cartridge memory is used for a user service (discount).
Meanwhile, there has been a mechanism in which information stored in a memory is displayed on a display section of a printer or a display of a personal computer, while there has not been supposed a mechanism in which information stored in the memory is printed nor a mechanism for grasping how users printed or utilized information such as advertisements in the cartridge or the printer.
Meanwhile, collecting used devices is very important from the viewpoint of a global environment. Particularly, a life of a printer or lives of consumer goods for use in the printer are relatively short in comparison with those of home appliances such as a television and a refrigerator and it is thus important to improve their salvage rate.